The rest of the world does not hate the freedom of America. Instead, they hate that the United States will not allow them that same freedom for themselves.

It has been said of those who question the policies of our government that “if you don’t like this country then you should leave it.” I recommend to the person who says this that instead they leave this country and see what the world is like outside the United States.

One vacation suggestion is Nicaragua. This is a country where the United States supported the brutal Somoza regime for four decades. Under Anastasio Somoza Debayle, torture was regularly used in interrogations with reported use of methods like electrical shocks, water-boarding and hanging by the wrists. Fingernails or eyeballs would sometimes be “pulled out” from the victim, and “others had their tongues cut off.” When Somoza was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. tried to preserve the brutal National Guard that was responsible for tormenting the Nicaraguan population.

The Nicaraguan people had their first free elections in 1979, in which they elected the Sandinistas to power. The U.S. almost immediately began funding and training the Contras who were attacking the Sandinista government. The Contras were ordered by the U.S. military to attack “soft targets,” namely civilian compounds. The U.S. was condemned by the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council for its “unlawful use of force” against Nicaragua in 1986. The Reagan Administration responded by stepping up aid to the Contras and ignoring the World Court decision. The civilian death toll of this attack on Nicaragua in the 1980s was in the tens of thousands. The U.S. has regained control of Nicaragua since 1990, and the country has become the second poorest in the hemisphere.

Another vacation suggestion is Guatemala. Guatemala was a democracy in the 1940s and early 1950s. This was until the democratically elected leader, Arbenz, was overthrown by a CIA coup in 1954 that installed a military junta. The destruction of the elected government “triggered a ghastly, four-decade-long cycle of terror and repression that led to the death of perhaps two hundred thousand Guatemalans.”

When there was finally an independent account by Truth Commissions in Guatemala, the atrocities committed there were almost entirely attributed to state terrorists.

The leading U.S. academic specialist on human rights in Latin America, Lars Schoultz, found in a 1981 study that U.S. aid "ha[d] tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens.” Guatemalans currently have per capita incomes of about $4,000 a year.

Another destination is Colombia, the leading recipient of U.S. military aid in the Western Hemisphere. It has also been one of the leading human rights violators in the Western Hemisphere for the last couple decades.

More union activists are killed in Colombia than anywhere else in the world. The majority of violence is carried out by the Colombian paramilitaries, which are closely linked with the Colombian military.

The paramilitaries, according to their own statements, make about 75 percent of their income through narcotrafficking.

Colombia is hailed as a “democracy” by the U.S. media despite the fact that when the Colombian farmers and peasants organized a political party in 1985, within a few years about 3,000 members were killed, including presidential candidates.

By the late 1990s there were about 3,000 deaths per year in Colombia. At that time U.S. military aid was increasing to Colombia under Clinton.

Indonesia might also interest you. After the U.S. helped overthrow the Sukarno regime in 1965, the US supported the Suharto dictatorship. Perhaps half a million or more Indonesians were killed within the first few months of Suharto’s reign.

A CIA study of the events in Indonesia assessed that, “In terms of the numbers killed, the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th Century.” Time Magazine reported in 1966 that, “the killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies.”

Suharto also invaded and wiped out one-third of the population of East Timor, using 80 percent U.S. arms as well as obtaining crucial U.S. diplomatic support. Suharto was supported with US military aid until 1998. When the U.S. finally withdrew support, the Suharto regime immediately collapsed.

The rest of the world does not hate the freedom of America. Instead, they hate that the United States will not allow them that same freedom for themselves.

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